So pull out the motherboard and buy a new one. Sure, it won't stick to the inside of your box all nicely like the one that came with the box, but it'll work. Probably.

Except that's expensive and not worth doing in this computer. (It'd have to be motherboard + processor + ram because of how old it is, at which point it's basically an entirely new machine--may as well get the right case, and maybe a new monitor or something.)

Buying win2k is also out. Yes, it does install. No, i am not paying for it for the privilege of running Microsoft's software--the wrong version, technically--when it's their own fault the stuff i already bought does not run. I could pirate it, but that's fairly illegal and for what end? Why would i want to go back to Windows?

I simply do not care enough to spend that sort of time or money. About the only thing i get out of it that i do not get out of Linux is games--and a TransGaming subscription is way cheaper than any of these solutions anyway.

Ahh, so we're running into activation problems? Microsoft will provide support. You do have to call India, read 25-40 someodd characters to them, and have them read 25-40 back, but it will activate it.

Last time i checked into BSD it didn't support my hardware. That's kind of a problem...

Maybe it's worth looking into, again...

arwing wrote:

This is why I use Gentoo. I've never had anything not work out of the box with it.

It does take a long ass time to compile everything from source, but it fucking works pretty damn well once you're done. You don't even have to download their LiveCD you can boot any distro's CD with working net drivers to install Gentoo.

I've thought about Gentoo, but much like Debian it seems too much like giving up... Just, with racing stripes painted on.

Quote:

I used to run Slack at one point... it is horrible and mean and eats puppies.

Yes, but it works.

Or, rather, it used to. It may have stopped at some point, which is annoying.

Quote:

But the problems you described of the Kernel not working can be caused by many many things. Nearly all of them are of the you fucked up nature.

It only looks that way.

The technical reason is because the kernel was mis-configured. But the reason the kernel was mis-configured was not, as might be expected, because i mis-configured it. It's gconfig. Taking the configuration over to xconfig made it work fine (for certain definitions of "fine", but that's how it goes for the time being...)

Quote:

Yes Linux could use some foolproofing, but as we've all seen (read clippy) too much foolproofing is a very bad idea.

I'm not so sure foolproofing is the answer.

I think the problem is that Linux is becoming so ornate that humans have given up trying to figure it out, instead just relying on the software to work things out. Which has worked okay in the recent past, but which appears to be working less and less okay as things become even more complex. (Then again, this is from a Slackware perspective--it may work fine in Ubuntu. I sort of doubt it, though. And if it works fine now, barring some new direction, it probably will eventually stop working fine.)

Quote:

nick012000 wrote:

So pull out the motherboard and buy a new one. Sure, it won't stick to the inside of your box all nicely like the one that came with the box, but it'll work. Probably.

You assume this is an OEM machine, or did I miss something?

It's not an OEM. I hand-built it with care back in 2000. In fact, back when i built it, i could bring Quake 3 matches to a standstill simply by appearing on the server and announcing my computer's specs :3nod:

These days, though, i'm saving money for a replacement... I fear it is disintegrating in slow motion.

(Edit)

krylex wrote:

Ahh, so we're running into activation problems? Microsoft will provide support. You do have to call India, read 25-40 someodd characters to them, and have them read 25-40 back, but it will activate it.

Nope, it's not activation problems.

The install disc refuses to write to hard drives connected to the computer.

_________________<a href="http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_019.htm">"God is powered by irony."</a>

The promise ATA 100 controller on that board doesn't have a proper driver in the original windows XP (I cannot verify this on disks that have SP2 slipstreamed. They have all worked fine for me).

Have you tried loading the asus ATA-100 drivers from a floppy disc at the beginning of XP setup where it asks you to hit f6 for a third party driver.

The other solution I've found for your problem is this: connect your hard drive to the ATA-66 IDE connector onboard (the secondary IDE if I gather everything correctly. I haven't looked at the specs of the board yet). WinXP does support that and it will write to those hard drives. Once you get booted up, install the ATA-100 promise drivers, and then hook it back up to the primary IDE connector.

If you haven't tried it with a SP2 slipstreamed version of XP, I would give it a shot as well. <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp">This site</a> shows pretty much how to do it, at least from a windows install. I'm not sure if you can do it without a windows machine, as the SP2 network install has to run, and I don't see that running correctly in a posix environment, although I could be mistaken.

Man, you people sure are dedicated to trying to get my Windows to work again XP

Even when it's on the other controller it still doesn't work. And when it's on the ATA-100 it will write a little bit, but then mysteriously stop and refuse to write beyond that. This happens consistently, every attempt.

I believe i've done the "use the floppy to load the driver" routine, but i may not have.

That's exactly what it does with everyone on the ATA100 controller. Starts, and then dies pathetically.

I'm also trying to help with windows XP, as 1: I can't help with your Linux problems; 2: the other being presented seems less than helpful; 3: I've dealt with the same problem, and I won't let anyone sit back and suffer if they want to use WinXP for some reason.

The technical reason is because the kernel was mis-configured. But the reason the kernel was mis-configured was not, as might be expected, because i mis-configured it. It's gconfig. Taking the configuration over to xconfig made it work fine (for certain definitions of "fine", but that's how it goes for the time being...)

menuconfig never failed me.

_________________All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.

Since the time of this rant, the old machine continued to disintegrate. I have bought a shiny new one and it works pretty well. It is better than your computer.

I am now running Ubuntu (my old Slack CD was missing some hardware stuff and i didn't feel like trying to get ahold of a new slack) and it works pretty well. Better than expected. Except that, unlike Slack, doing something the developers didn't think of is an enormous pain in the ass. So it works pretty well as long as you just want to check your emails or something. If you find Windows-like "file-browser-as-center-of-computer" (as opposed to, ie, "command-line-as-center-of-computer") organization evil--like i do; it gives me carpal tunnel!--then you're going to end up annoyed. I have icons on my desktop for some reason. I never, ever click on them. And apt (or synaptic, more precisely) works pretty well. So far, at least. As long as you don't try to do anything unexpected. If you do it is a huge pain in the ass.

seriously. It works. It's as simple or as "user friendly" as you want it to be. You can install it from an existing distro or liveCD. It has excellent support and up to date packages and you can feel smug about having compiled everything locally.

briaobiarbareaoeu wrote:

This is why, with 16 years as a network engineer and trainer plus 72 PC certs, I use a Mac.

Macs are not immune to these types of bizarre incompatibilities. True they happen less often but when they do, good luck figuring out what the fuck is wrong.

_________________All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.

The culture of the project's core group has become steadily more unhealthy, more inward-looking, <b>more insistent on narrow "free software" ideological purity,</b> and more disconnected from the technical and evangelical challenges that must be met to make Linux a world-changing success that liberates a majority of computer users.

The culture of the project's core group has become steadily more unhealthy, more inward-looking, <b>more insistent on narrow "free software" ideological purity,</b> and more disconnected from the technical and evangelical challenges that must be met to make Linux a world-changing success that liberates a majority of computer users.

Whut?!!?

I didn't say he knew what the fuck he was talking about. Just that he was sick of it.

(I suspect the reason he moved to Ubuntu is that they include some closed-source stuff. He's running from the hippies.)

_________________<a href="http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_019.htm">"God is powered by irony."</a>

Joined: Mon May 06, 2002 5:00 pmPosts: 1967Location: All curled up in a Calabi-Yau space

My experience with Linux desktop environments has been that they’re easy to initially install, quite lovely when they’re working (a few odd quirks aside, tons better than Windows for general purposes), and an absolute fucking pain to install anything on that didn’t come with the initial CD’s. Say what you will about Installshield (and I’ve run into some nasty Installshield issues at my previous job), but it generally works. Dependency/install nonsense is the main reason I haven’t bothered to put a Linux partition on my new PC yet.

I haven’t tried the more user-friendly distros lately, so I’m not sure how much they’ve improved. Guess I’ll give Gentoo a try.

an absolute fucking pain to install anything on that didn’t come with the initial CD’s.

Don't get me wrong, Gentoo can be a real bitch on the initial install. You have to know your hardware VERY well and you have to know what you're doing in general. However, you don't have this particular issue because literally nothing comes on the CD, but once you get a kernel compiled and you boot into your new system you're pretty well set as everything is kept track of very well by Portage.

_________________All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.

Joined: Mon May 06, 2002 5:00 pmPosts: 1967Location: All curled up in a Calabi-Yau space

arwing wrote:

Don't get me wrong, Gentoo can be a real bitch on the initial install.

I'd certainly prefer that to the reverse, and I know my hardware pretty well, but I guess I'll try Ubuntu instead. That seems to be what all the cool kids who don't want to hand-edit source files and install scripts to get their system working are doing these days.

On my last Linux install, I got into some screwed-up catch-22 where I apparently had the wrong versions of make, autoconfig, and the package management tool, and they all seemed to need each other in order to install the correct versions. It seemed to have required manually compiling/editing/blood sacrificing various things to fix, and if something similar happens on Ubuntu I may just have to give up on using Linux as my primary desktop, as much as I like it.

In addition to the things already mentioned I'd have to say one of the main causes of these type of problems is that there's no hard division between "system" software and "user" software the way there is in the Mac and Windows worlds. Of course, the ability to set up your system however you want is one of the main advantages of Linux, and trying to completely define an official set of "system" software would run contrary to that. I don't really know a permanent answer other than (assuming the scenario is possible) to wait until we develop sentient AI's that are cheap enough to stick in a hardware chip on the PC and have them monitor and manage all your software issues (they'd need a built-in internet stack and hardware access to the NIC to google for needed software and fixes, I'd imagine :)

_________________Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.- Robert Anton Wilson

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